Labor Day Travels

It's funny how when you don't work, you still get really excited about your spouse's holidays. I mean, according to Jamie, everyday is the weekend for me :-) But this weekend, Jamie had to burn up some flex time, so a 3-day holiday weekend turned into a 5-day weekend, and it was just too good to waste. We decided at the last minute to go to Carlsbad Caverns and White Sands, and get some more use out of our National Parks Pass.

Day One - Carlsbad Caverns

Carlsbad is only about 4 1/2 hrs from the ABQ, but man oh man is it a boring drive. There isn't much to look at until you get to Roswell; there, Jordan could point out all of the aliens and tell us what color they were. We were a little apprehensive over what Jo would think of the caves: would she be scared? Bored? Cold? Immediately upon being told we were going to a cave, she started asking about trolls. So I tried to nip that in the bud by saying no more trolls lived in these caves. When we got there, she brought it up a few more times, but she never got scared. Jamie carried her in the backpack the whole way down, and she had a good time. She liked the lights and the tunnels and the drip drip drips. However, there was this one cave formation that looked just like a gnome, and I couldn't let it go. So I told her it was a troll that a witch had turned to stone. She really liked that story, but of course started asking where the witch was. Once we got to the bottom, she wanted to walk, and she did almost the whole mile plus loop on her own. She's a trooper.

We planned the visit so we could stay for the bat egress from the caves. After 14 years in Austin, I have never seen the bats fly out from the Congress Bridge. So I was going to be really disappointed to miss the cave bats. They came out about 7:15 and it was really neat. They spiral out counter-clockwise and you can hear their wings. They say about 300K-400K bats live in that cave, so it's a decent size colony. But you can't photograph or video them there at the amplitheater. I guess it messes with the bats. They said cell phone transmissions really confuse them too. So I took a pic on the road back up to the parking lot.

Day 2 - Living Desert Zoo (Carlsbad) and White Sands

The Living Desert Zoo doesn't look like much, but we'd heard it was cool, and we did enjoy it. It's small, but the critters are pretty easy to spot. It was a gorgeous morning and everything smelled like desert. Their star attraction was a black bear that paints, but we never could find her in her enclosure. Or any of the big cats. There was another family there with 3 little boys, and Jordan was probably more interested in them than anything else. She did a lot of running around, which wore her out for the car trip to Alamagordo.

The drive to Alamagordo is awesome. You go through the Sacramento Mts, up about 9000 ft, and then back down. I keep saying that New Mexico may make me a car trip convert. We'll see. Once in town, we killed time by eating a late lunch/early dinner and watching some college ball at the hotel. It was a full moon night, and the plan was to go to White Sands in time to do some sledding, get pictures, watch the sunset, and stay for the moonrise. Wow, was it worth it. This has got to be one of the neatest spots in New Mexico. You just can't imagine how WHITE the sand is, and how fine. Of course, it's not technically sand (it's Gypsum), but still. And it packs tightly, so the dunes are hard, not shifty. This was by far Jordan's favorite part of the trip. She loved playing in sand, she loved the sledding, and she and Jamie played nonstop until it got dark. Poor Jamie, he must have been exhausted from running up the hills, often toting Jo, and shoving the sled back down again.

Once the moon was up, and about ready to disappear behind clouds, we left. Sadly, it was too cloudy for decent stargazing. But we ended the night in style with a late dinner consisting of raspberry milkshake (Jamie) and mondo brownie sundae (me and Jo). Awesome.

Day 3 - the drive home

I don't usually consider the drive home as part of a trip, but this was an interesting drive. I drove, and in route I saw two tarantulas crossing the highway (I think I smooshed one...), two huge hawks that were white with spots (one was just standing on the side of the road), several roadkill coyotes, and a big lava field (Valley of Fires or something like that). Oh, and I hit a bird. All in all, a fun road trip, and no telling when we'll get to go again.